utah | setiawanphoto

Bryce Canyon National Park is located in Southwestern Utah, about 90 miles away from Zion National Park. Bryce Canyon is known for its hoodoos, the spire-like rock formations in arid, desert areas formed by erosions. While hoodoos can be found also in other places in the world, nowhere else you could find a large concentration of them like in Bryce Canyon.

I arrived late at night on my first visit to Bryce Canyon, and we went straight to our hotel that was located just outside the park. We went to the Bryce Amphitheater — the main area where the hoodoos are found in Bryce Canyon — very early in the following morning, hoping to catch the sunrise and see the sun light illuminating the amphitheater area in the morning. We were not disappointed; it was quite a sight seeing the sun rises in the distance, then slowly seeing the hoodoos in the Bryce Amphitheater being lighted from just silhouettes to bright red color of the sandstone. During the daytime, you can see the area quite clearly from various overlooks in the park. The air quality around Bryce Canyon is among the best that you can see as far as 160 miles away from there.

The photo below was taken from an overlook near the Bryce Amphitheater during my second visit to the park. It was early spring time. That morning it was a bit cloudy so we didn’t get to see the same dramatic illumination of the hoodoos, but the sun light was still soft in the morning that you can see the details of the hoodoos at the Bryce Amphitheater. In the background, you see some vegetations that looked like bushes. Those are actually tall pine trees — to give you an idea of the scale.

Zion National Park is located in Southwestern Utah, close to the Nevada and Arizona borders. The main feature of this park is the Zion Canyon, a canyon 15 miles long and up to half mile deep, surrounding by large sandstone mountains. At the end of the Zion Canyon, there is the Zion Narrows, a gorge that at one point is as narrow as 20 feet wide but 2,000 feet tall. The east entrance to the park goes through the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, which is a winding road that cuts through rocky surroundings and then descends into the canyon.

The first time I visited Zion was during a weekend road trip with my brother when we went from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon National Park, and continued north to southern Utah to visit Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Parks. The drive through the Zion – Mount Carmel Highway was interesting enough, not knowing what to expect to see when started descending into the Zion Canyon. That’s when we were awestruck seeing the tall mountains around us (and realizing how small we were in comparison). We parked our car at the Visitor Center and took the shuttle bus to the Zion Canyon (that’s the only motorized vehicle allowed into the canyon). At one point of the ride, our driver slowed down and pointed us to a vertical cliff of one of the mountains. There were two specs in the middle — a couple of mountain climbers on their way up. They had been climbing since the day before, and it would take them at least another day to reach the top.

The photo below was taken during my second visit to Zion on another road trip with two of my cousins. We stopped after driving down the canyon on the Zion – Mount Carmel Highway to pause and enjoy the scenery around us. On this photo you could see my cousin in the bottom middle part of the photo looking at the mountains around him. He’s about 5’6″ in height, but in this photo he looked quite small in comparison to the surrounding mountains.